Meteors, Meteorites & Fireballs
The small bodies that reach the ground — the meteorites that fall from asteroids, Mars, and the Moon, the fireballs that announce their arrival, and the craters they leave behind. The capstone of the small-bodies trilogy, connected through the Knowledge Graph to the asteroids and comets they come from.
Explore by theme
- All Meteorites
Every meteorite modelled in the encyclopedia, across all classes.
20 entries - Meteorite Falls
Meteorites seen to fall and then recovered — the freshest, least-altered samples.
12 entries - Meteorite Finds
Meteorites discovered on the ground without a witnessed fall.
8 entries - Recent Falls
Meteorites recovered from twenty-first-century falls, several traced to their orbits by camera networks.
4 entries - Largest Meteorites
The most massive meteorites ever recovered, led by the ~60-tonne Hoba iron.
5 entries - Carbonaceous Chondrites
Primitive, carbon- and water-rich meteorites carrying the organic building blocks of the Solar System.
6 entries - Stony Meteorites
The chondrites and achondrites — meteorites made mostly of rock.
13 entries - Iron Meteorites
Dense nickel-iron meteorites from the cores of shattered asteroids.
5 entries - Martian Meteorites
Rocks blasted off Mars and delivered to Earth, identified by trapped Martian atmosphere.
2 entries - Lunar Meteorites
Pieces of the Moon flung to Earth by impacts, matched to the Apollo samples.
1 entries - HED Meteorites (from Vesta)
The howardite–eucrite–diogenite meteorites, pieces of the asteroid Vesta's crust.
1 entries - Fireballs
Exceptionally bright meteors and the bolides that detonate in the atmosphere.
2 entries - Bolides
Fireballs bright enough to explode — the airbursts of Peekskill and the Bering Sea.
2 entries - Impact Structures
The craters left on Earth by past impacts, from young Meteor Crater to ancient Vredefort.
4 entries - Recovery Sites
The strewn fields where the fragments of a single fall are recovered.
2 entries - Planetary Defense
The damaging airbursts and the objects that reached the ground — why near-Earth objects are tracked.
3 entries
Meteorite classification
The four great classes and their groups.
- Chondrites9 modelled
- Achondrites4 modelled
- Iron Meteorites5 modelled
- Stony-Iron Meteorites2 modelled
Impact structures & recovery sites
- Barringer Crater (Meteor Crater)~ 50,000 years
- Nördlinger Ries~ 14.8 million years
- Sudbury Basin~ 1.85 billion years
- Vredefort Structure~ 2 billion years
- Campo del Cielo FieldStrewn field
- Sikhote-Alin Strewn FieldStrewn field
Meteorite falls
All meteorites →| Name | Classification | Fall / find | Country | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Winchcombe | CM2 carbonaceous chondrite | Fall | United Kingdom | 2021-02-28 |
| Aguas Zarcas | CM2 carbonaceous chondrite | Fall | Costa Rica | 2019-04-23 |
| Chelyabinsk | LL5 ordinary chondrite | Fall | Russia | 2013-02-15 |
| Tagish Lake | C2 (ungrouped) carbonaceous chondrite | Fall | Canada | 2000-01-18 |
| Peekskill | H6 ordinary chondrite | Fall | United States | 1992-10-09 |
| Murchison | CM2 carbonaceous chondrite | Fall | Australia | 1969-09-28 |
| Allende | CV3 carbonaceous chondrite | Fall | Mexico | 1969-02-08 |
| Millbillillie | Eucrite (HED) | Fall | Australia | 1960 (October) |
| Abee | EH4 enstatite chondrite | Fall | Canada | 1952-06-09 |
| Sikhote-Alin | IIAB iron | Fall | Russia | 1947-02-12 |
| Estherville | Mesosiderite | Fall | United States | 1879-05-10 |
| Orgueil | CI1 carbonaceous chondrite | Fall | France | 1864-05-14 |
Data & provenance
Each meteorite, class, group, fireball, impact structure, and recovery site is a first-class knowledge-graph entity resolved through the Scientific Data Engine. Classifications and fall data come from the Meteoritical Bulletin Database. The parent bodies — the asteroid Vesta, Mars, and the Moon — the impact events, and the meteor showers are the platform's existing entities, reused and never duplicated. This encyclopedia detects no live fireballs; for observing, see the Live Sky meteor showers. Unknown values are left blank. See source quality.